The History Book Club discussion

This is the thread for Rwanda.

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Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda

by Roméo Dallaire

Synopsis:

On the 10th anniversary of when UN peacekeepers landed in Rwanda, Random House Canada proudly publishes the unforgettable 1st-hand account of the genocide by the leader of the mission. Digging deep into shattering memories, Dallaire has written a powerful story of betrayal, naïveté, racism & international politics. His message is simple, undeniable: Never again.

When Lt-Gen. Roméo Dallaire was called to serve as force commander of the UN intervention in Rwanda in '93, he thought he was heading off on a straightforward peacekeeping mission. Thirteen months later he flew home from Africa, broken, disillusioned & suicidal, having witnessed the slaughter of 800,000 Rwandans in 100 days.

In Shake Hands with the Devil, he takes readers with him on a return voyage into hell, vividly recreating the events the international community turned its back on. This book is an unsparing eyewitness account of the failure by humanity to stop the genocide, despite timely warnings. Woven thru the story of this disastrous mission is his own journey from confident Cold Warrior, to devastated UN commander, to retired general engaged in a painful struggle to find a measure of peace, hope & reconciliation.

This book is a personal account of his conversion from a man certain of his worth & secure in his assumptions to one conscious of his own weaknesses & failures & critical of the institutions he'd relied on. It might not sit easily with standard ideas of military leadership, but understanding what happened to him & his mission to Rwanda is crucial to understanding the moral minefields peacekeepers are forced to negotiate when we ask them to step into dirty wars.

An upcoming book:
Release date: May 13, 2025

The Struggle for Liberation: A History of the Rwandan Civil War, 1990-1994

by John Burton Kegel (no photo)

Synopsis:

The story of the Rwandan Genocide has been told many times by scholars and journalists. Over the course of a hundred days in the spring and summer of 1994, about eight hundred thousand Tutsi and moderate Hutu were murdered by their extremist Hutu compatriots. Those hundred days were the final phase of a four-year civil war, also known as the Struggle for Liberation, which formed the immediate context of the genocide. Though scholars have researched preparations for the genocide and the international community’s role in it, none has placed the Struggle for Liberation at the heart of the narrative. However, the preparation of the genocide, the rise and fall of the moderate opposition, the degradation of the Forces armées rwandaises (FAR) from a respected fighting force to a genocidal militia, the role of the international community, the Arusha negotiations, and the execution of the genocide all took place in the context of that war. John Burton Kegel contends that the Struggle for Liberation forms the bedrock of any genuine understanding of Rwanda between 1990 and 1994, and indeed beyond.

The Struggle for Liberation, which eventually led to the genocide, was fought between the FAR and the civilians and soldiers of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and its armed wing, the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA). The civil war started on October 1, 1990, when the RPF entered Rwanda from Uganda, where Rwandan refugees had lived throughout the Great Lakes region since roughly 1959. This book traces the history of those refugees―and Rwanda’s deeper Hutu-Tutsi divide―from the precolonial period up to 1990. It also provides a wholly new take on how the disciplined RPF, which rules Rwanda to this day, was born and organized.